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Osaka Steel, Japan’s largest steel sections producer, decided to keep its list prices of sections unchanged for domestic sales in March, trying to stabilize the prices in steelmaking raw materials and other input costs, though the company is ready to raise its prices in the coming months should the input costs incline further, a company official said on February 26.
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Japan’s domestic plate prices rose Yen 2,000/tonne ($19/) on week by February 25, mainly on the list price hikes by the domestic steel producers, which have intensified the worry among the distributors, as higher prices may dampen the sales in an already stagnant market, market sources in Tokyo shared on Thursday.
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China Baowu Steel Group (Baowu), the world’s and the country’s top steel producer, has been the first in China’s steel industry to pledge realizing carbon neutral by 2050, or ten years ahead of China’s targeted timeline as a country, Chen Derong, Baowu’s chairman, disclosed in an interview with China’s media.
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Toyota Motor, Japan’s largest automaker, has informed its auto components suppliers that it will keep domestic automobile production at around 12,500-13,000 units/day during March-May, and its auto steel consumption, thus, will not be affected much by the short-time stoppage at half of its 28 assembly lines in Japan after the earthquake in mid-February, industry sources in Tokyo and Nagoya of central Japan shared on February 24.
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Japan’s largest integrated mill – Nippon Steel – denied a news report by Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei), Japan’s business daily, that it has decided to suspend a blast furnace at its Kashima Area of East Nippon Works near Tokyo for a few years, though the domestic steel market sources see the likelihood.
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JFE Shoji Corporation, a trading company under Japan’s second largest integrated mill - JFE Steel group – has just commissioned its second coil processing plant at its existing coil distribution center in Hai Phong city of north Vietnam recently in February to cope with the probably growing demand for steel sheets in the ASEAN country, JFE Shoji announced on February 18.
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Japan’s exports of steel in all grades and forms declined by 13.3% on year to about 2.43 million tonnes for January, or the ninth month in a row with on-year drops, according to the preliminary data released by Japan’s Ministry of Finance on February 17, which was mainly due to the domestic steel mills’ preference for domestic sales over exports when supply was tight, Mysteel Global understood.
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Japan’s domestic carbon steel products sales totalled about 3.4 million tonnes for last December, or touching the year’s high for 2020, according to the latest data released by the Japan Iron & Steel Federation (JISF) on February 16, which was “a clear sign of pick-up in steel demand,” a JISF official commented on Wednesday.
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Home is where parents are in the Chinese culture. But for this year’s Chinese New Year celebrations, many Chinese working in cities or in other countries away from their places of birth will probably have to bear the separation from their parents for CNY for the first time this year, and all for a common reason – the COVID-19 virus. For the unluckier ones, this might even be the second time they’ll miss their annual family get-together.
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China’s sales and output of automobiles jumped by 29.5% and 34.6% respectively on year last month, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) released the latest numbers on February 9, attributing the robust performance to the remaining solid demand for vehicles and at the same time low base numbers for January 2020.
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Japan’s new vessel orders in January jumped by 62.2% on year to 1.21 million gross tonnes in 31 vessels, according to new data released by the Japan Ship Exporters’ Association (JSEA) on February 9. Though last month’s orders were also 37.4% up on the December result, a JSEA official cautioned that ship plate consumption isn’t likely to increase because the rise was probably only temporary. The Japanese yards are still slowing down their operations, he said.
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Nippon Steel, Japan’s largest integrated mill, now expects to be able to post a pre-tax profit of Yen 30 billion ($284.6 million) on a consolidated basis for fiscal 2020 (April 2020-March 2021), reversing its earlier projection of a Yen 60 billion pre-tax loss, the company announced on February 5.
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Japan’s crude steel output including both carbon and special steel is estimated to rise by 7.8% on quarter to about 23.7 million tonnes over January-March, according to a survey released by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) on February 3, indicating the further improvement in steel demand.
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Kobe Steel, Japan’s third largest integrated steelmaker, has decided to lift domestic prices of its carbon steel flat products for sale to the spot market, to re-rollers and for construction projects by Yen 15,000/t ($143/t) for March shipments, Mysteel Global has learned. The increase is aimed at transferring further rises in raw materials costs, a company official confirmed on February 3.
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Japan’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for its manufacturing industry for January 2021 has declined by 0.2 basis points on month to 49.8 mainly due to lower output with the resurgence of the COVID-19, according to the release from au Jibun Bank Corporation on February 1.
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Japan’s carbon steel exports declined for a fifth straight year last year, sliding by 5.9% from 2019 to reach 20.93 million tonnes, according to the latest data released by the Japan Iron & Steel Federation on January 29. A JISF official explained that the drop was mainly from the negative impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, and that the quick pace of economic recovery in China and its need for steel had prevented a much steeper fall.
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The Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for China’s manufacturing industry eased for the second month in January by another 0.6 basis point on month to 51.3, or in the expansion zone for the eleventh month, though the pace of expansion slowed down, as the resurgence of the COVID-19, Zhao Qinghe, senior statistician of the country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) was quoted explaining in the release on January 31.
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The deadline by December 2020 has lapsed for India’s Ministry of Finance (MoF) to decide on whether to extend the probe or impose the anti-dumping (AD) duties on tinplate and tin-free steel (TFS) imports from four nations including Japan on the recommendation by India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI).
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Nippon Steel, Japan’s top integrated steel mill, has divested from Guangzhou Pacific Tinplate Co. Ltd. (PATIN), a 200,000 tonnes/year tinplate joint venture in Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong province by December 2020, and it will afterwards focus on the other invested tinplate plant in Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei province, according to its statement on January 27.
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For 2020, China’s sizeable industrial enterprises posted a 4.1% on-year increase in their total gross profits to Yuan 6.45 trillion ($1 trillion), with telecommunication, computer, and other electronics manufacturers and automakers being the top two contributors of the total profits, according to the latest sharing by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on January 27.
